Ensuing census to keep teachers busy till September

With the Tamil Nadu government all set to carry out census drive from April through September, the services of over one lakh teachers is likely to be sought.

The Union Cabinet had a few days ago approved the proposal for conducting Census of India 2021 at a cost of Rs 8,754.23 crore and the updating of the National Population Register (NPR) at a cost of Rs 3,941.35 crore.

Accordingly, house listing and housing census will reportedly commence from April and go on till September 2020, and lakhs of teachers will likely be deployed for the work.

The enumerators, generally government schoolteachers and appointed by the State government, will be carrying the work of updating NPR details along with the census, besides attending to their regular duties. The census process involves visiting each and every household and canvassing a separate questionnaire for house listing, housing census and population enumeration.

As an effect, around one lakh teachers from government schools in Tamil Nadu-especially at the primary level-will be called for census duty, which is expected to start by the first week of April itself.

Many teachers have, however, complained that it would be difficult for them to carry out census-related work during the period, especially from April to May, owing to the conduct of annual examination and answer paper evaluation.

Tamil Nadu Teachers Association president P K Ilamaran claimed that appointing teachers for census work will affect the functioning of schools as most of the the faculty will have to be away.

“Taking census for each house will take at least half an hour as they have to collect data for around 30 factors. They (teachers) would be able to cover only around ten houses by afternoon. As it is outdoor work, thousands of teachers will be absent from their schools, which will affect students’ studies, especially during examination time,” Ilamaran added.

Further, stating that functioning of schools will be affected due to census work, Ilamaran suggested that instead of deploying teachers, unemployed graduates who number in lakhs could be utilised to carry out the job.